I have a little treat for you today, several manicures.. mostly nail art I’ve done over the past month or so that I’ve been meaning to share. Hopefully I’ll be able to upload some higher quality pictures another time, but for now cell phone pictures will have to do!

China Glaze Crushed Candy Crackle layered over China Glaze Swing Baby

What I call a “preppy” manicure, it made me feel very tennis-club-in-the-Hamptons. Used Essie Cute As A Button, Essie Mint Candy Apple, Essie Tart Deco and (unfortunately) an unknown Essie (the bright pink).

I can’t find the nail art inspiration picture I interpreted for this manicure–but I used Justin Bieber for NOPI I’m A Belieber with white and black Art Club nail art polishes for the design.

I am so utterly obsessed with jelly polishes, and this color especially: OPI Big Hair, Big Nails from the Texas 2011 collection!

I can’t tell you how ecstatic I was when I found OPI Sparkle-icious at a salon nearby. I didn’t jump on them when they first came out because I was poorly, and I couldn’t pass it up again!

Nail art with Zoya Dove and some Art Club studs! Loved this one, so chic, so… Rihanna.

I recently bought wall shelves from Target to organize my polish collection. This is a shot of all my polishes as of May 23, not including my MAC polishes (which are stored on a MAC polish display next to my make-up).

Yay, I had a lot of fun doing this manicure! I was inspired by a picture of someone’s manicure that I found on tumblr. The “roses” are very easy to make, just lots of semi-circles in varying tints and shades of a couple colors. I chose to do roses only on my ring and thumb nails for this manicure, while the rest just had the striped pattern.

Before I post the pictures, an apology for the state of my nails in these photos. My nails (and hands) take a lot of abuse from me right now, as I am giving 2-3 facials a day, and constantly washing my hands to keep sanitary. I get thirsty just looking at my poor dehydrated skin!

USED:
Color Club High Society
Color Club Who Are You Wearing?
Color Club Ms. Socialite
Color Club She’s Sooo Glam
OPI Who the Shrek Are You?
Seche Vite Top Coat

Today I’m bringing you some nail art inspired by one of the season’s trends… tartan!! I felt a little bad about bashing MAC’s holiday nail set, so I thought I’d show appreciation where it’s due. Also, I think it’s appropriate that I welcome December with some tartan loveliness! :)

I started by painting my entire nail with one coat of Gelous. I let it dry for a few minutes and followed it with a coat of Asiatique. Next, I painted half of my nail with the layer 3 mixture. Then, I painted a small spot of Blue India over the red half, right on the border of the green half. Next, I painted a line of diagonal stripes horizontally and vertically with Lemon Fizz. Lastly, I painted two vertical lines with the layer 6 mixture around the dot of Blue India. Finished with a coat of Seche Vite! I used a very thin, short-bristled paint brush from an art store for all the steps after Asiatique.

This nail art was clearly inspired by the promo image for MAC’s A Tartan Tale collection.

I wanted to show you one way to extend the life of a manicure if you get chippy tips after a few days. My original manicure was MAC Earthly Harmony, and I simply used Nail Art Striper in black and a rhinestone to cover the chippy tip!

Do you have any other nail art ideas for chippy tips?

I follow WAH Nails of London on Tumblr (and Twitter), and I absolutely love getting inspiration from the pictures they post. Even though I am decent with freehand design, I usually feel that their designs are too advanced for me, or I don’t have the right colors or tools to complete similar looks (ie, Minx, gel nails, etc.). But I realized today that I had collected 3 snapshots of aztec manicures for inspiration, and knew I could do my own.

I am so, so, so happy with the design, but I have one small dilemma.. my right hand has ZERO polish on it right now. I’m not sure if my hand is steady enough to attempt ambidexterity. I’ll figure that out tomorrow.. :P Hope you enjoyed!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had an interview with a school a couple weeks ago and I wanted to do a light/summery manicure and use a polish I haven’t used in a while. I chose MAC’s Silkwig. It was discontinued while I was working for them, so you can’t pick it up any more, but it’s a very dupeable color. It’s a a pale peachy-pink sheer polish with a creamy formula. Even though this bottle is years old, it still applies like a dream and withstood chipping for several days (I’m pretty abusive to my fingernails so this is quite a long time for me).I think this is three coats–I wanted it to lighten my nails, but I wasn’t so worried about the visible nail line, so 3 coats was opaque enough for me! The “flower” design on my thumb was made very easily with a dotting tool I picked up from transdesign.